I have solved it, it was an SELinux isuue. init.d seems to have different SELinux rools than 'service restart dovecot' at command prompt.

/Thanks.

From: tss@iki.fi To: pelle2004@hotmail.com Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:44:19 +0300 CC: dovecot@dovecot.org Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Dovecot service needs a second restart after boot - euid is not dir owner

On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 11:50 +0200, Pelle Svensson wrote:

...

After reboot dovecot service need a restart. dovecot service starts as S99dovecot with only S99rc-local coming up.

After boot following error is filled up in dovecot.log

Aug 28 11:33:12 imap(vuser): Error: open(/home/fetchmail/mailroot/map/dovecot.index.log) failed: Permission denied (euid=500(vuser) egid=500(vuser) missing +r perm: /home/fetchmail/mailroot/map/dovecot.index.log, euid is not dir owner) Aug 28 11:33:12 imap(vuser): Error: file_dotlock_create(/home/fetchmail/mailroot/map/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied (euid=500(fetchmail) egid=500(fetchmail) missing +w perm: /home/fetchmail/mailroot/map, euid is not dir owner) Aug 28 11:33:12 imap(vuser): Error: open(/home/fetchmail/mailroot/map/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied

After Linux has booted you just issue service dovecot restart

And everything is back to normal and no error.

Does it actually need the restart? If you don't restart, do these errors just keep happening forever?

I'd guess that the NFS hasn't fully finished mounting by the time Dovecot runs so it fails with these errors.. I'm not really sure though. In any case I don't think there's anything Dovecot can do about this.